Ezra is a 42-year old white male, a lifelong bachelor who lives alone in the rowhome he owns in the Castor Gardens section of northeast Philadelphia. This middle class neighborhood is comprised of a diverse mix of families, many of whom are first or second generation immigrants to this country. Like many of his neighbors, Ezra is Jewish, with family roots in Eastern Europe. His other near neighbors include Asians from Cambodia, Vietnam and India, as well as African Americans.

Ezra has a bachelor's degree and earns $36,000 per year working full-time as a programmer-analyst in the computer department of Philadelphia's city government. He attends to the functioning of the hardware aspects (specifically servers and routers) of the computer systems.

Free Time: Ezra spends 6 to 10 hours per week of her free time preparing for his role as the Torah reader at his synagogue, memorizing and practicing in Hebrew. With pride, he told me, "Not a lot of people can do that. Everyone thinks I do a good job at it." He also enjoys going to Phillies baseball games, reading newspapers ("I'm a news junkie.") and he watches a lot of television. "It's a good way to relieve tension." His favorite programs are sitcoms, "Frasier," "Will and Grace," and "That's Life," which give him "a good laugh." In Ezra's opinion, Frasier especially is very well written and witty. It also presents unique comedic situations, which Ezra thinks are not that far-fetched after all.

Ezra stays in touch with about 5 friends or relatives by telephone. He sees a few of these people socially or at his synagogue, and emails several of them occasionally.

Internet: Although he works in the computer field, Ezra does not seem to be much of a computer user, personally. He occasionally uses a PC at work, during his lunch break. He uses Web-TV at home to email with friends and to access the internet (about 3 hours per week). His email usage is light; he sends about 5 personal emails and receives 2 personal emails per week. "I prefer to speak to people eon the phone rather than use email. It's more personal. Why write when phoning's easier? They're local calls." Ezra has no interest in instant messaging or chat room usage.

Ezra sees the internet as "an extra way of obtaining information," which has not changed his life much in the five years since he began using it. His internet usage focuses on financial investment sites and world news sources. His favorite site is FredSherman.com for information on stocks and for general financial advice. "I like to follow the market. I don't often buy, but I like to keep up with what the analysts say." Other favorite sites are one by online investor's advantage, called investortoolbox.com, for information on the direction of the market. It has good tools to indicate which stocks to buy. "When I learned to use them, I felt clever."

On his most recent visit to the internet, Ezra went to another favorite site, that for the "Imus in the Morning" radio show, where he found a lot of links and email discussions about current news. He followed links to The New York Times and the BBC websites. "I just like keeping up with what's going on in the world."

Ezra mainly returns to the same sites each time he uses the internet, but sometimes he follows links at those sites to new ones, to goes to sites he may have heard of during the day. Sometimes he visits websites related to sports, religion, hobbies, humor and sexually explicit content.

Ezra recalls finding upsetting information on the internet within the last year about the lynching to death of some Israelis in the Palestinian uprising.

"The first place I heard about was on the internet. It was an upsetting, incident and video clips added to the horror of the situation."

He also recalls following a link from the Imus site about the CIA's role in the coming to power of the Shah of Iran. "I'd heard things about it, but this was a really detailed article."

If he were to want information about a candidate for political office, Ezra would go to a website for the political party to which the candidate belongs, or to a site for the city or state in which the candidate was running. He did not seem very familiar with the use of search engines, although he knows that yahoo is a search engine. He does not know how to transfer a file via computer, and could not name any portals.

Interviewer: Carolyn Rahe